Simple Steps for Performing a Website Audit

The rapidly changing nature of the web can make it easy to forget that your web presence needs to be periodically updated and optimized for your visitors. Redesigning can’t happen every year, but you can perform an audit on your site to make incremental improvements over time. Here are a few simple things to check for at least annually to keep your site up-to-date:

-Clean up dead links: Pages that don’t receive much traffic are particularly susceptible to linking to content that has been removed, on your site or outside.

-Revisit your site’s story and evaluate content based on that story: If you have multiple web managers, are all their content contributions telling the same story?

-Check your navigation: Come up with a list of questions visitors may be coming to your site to answer. Have someone unfamiliar with the products or services in question try to answer these questions using your site, and time them. If you’re not satisfied with the time, you may want to rethink your navigation.

-Evaluate your third-party integrations: You may use third party programs to make up for capabilities your CMS lacked at the time of adoption. The audit is a good time to research whether or not your CMS is still incapable of performing the tasks you originally adopted the third party to do.

-Talk to your IT professional about upgrades: It can be hard to tell if all CMS upgrades are worth the hassle, but your IT professional can point you in the right direction.